Former Victor resident appears on 'Letterman'

A former Victor resident who plays the violin in a band headed up by singer Nicole Atkins appeared on “Late Show with David Letterman” Tuesday.

Gillian Rivers, who now lives in Brooklyn, played with Atkins’ band, Nicole Atkins & the Sea, an alternative and folk rock act that hails from New Jersey. The band released its second album, “Neptune City,” Tuesday.

Letterman’s show aired at 11:30 p.m. on WROC-TV (Channel 8).

Chuck Hertrick was among the many viewers. He is headmaster at Allendale Columbia School in Pittsford, from which Rivers graduated in 1999.

“She was just a terrific kid here,” he said, adding that he “announced” her Letterman appearance “to our school community.”

Rivers and her parents lived in Victor while she was in high school. According to the school’s alumni records office, her family has since moved to Baltimore.

Hertrick said Rivers, while at Allendale Columbia, was involved in the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. “She auditioned as an eighth-grader and got a chair,” he said. “That’s very unusual at that grade level.”

Rivers traveled to London and Germany with the RPYO and was eventually chosen to be concertmistress in her senior year. The mistress is the first violinist, who is responsible for keeping the orchestra in tune.

While with the RPYO, she also performed with the Ying Quartet at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester.

Rivers also excelled in the classroom, taking Advanced Placement courses. She went on to attend Oberlin College in Ohio.

“She has always been musically inclined,” Hertrick said. “Music is very much her life, and she knew it early on. That was a wonderful thing to see.”